Beneath the vast, deathly silent starry sky, the Flying Boat hovered motionless.
Li Yun stood at the bow. The evening wind whipped around him, but could not dispel the cold weight in his eyes.
I've been set up!
Completely and utterly!
Every abrupt coincidence, every unusual detail, every conveniently leaked rumor and sudden eruption of strange phenomena now linked together into a picture clear as day.
The Through-Ancient Dynasty. Only it had both the means and the motive.
That was right—the motive.
After piecing together those anomalies and comparing them with what he had learned in the Saint Emperor Ruins, Li Yun had begun to understand why the Through-Ancient Dynasty had done this.
It was a performance, a play staged specifically to shift the blame.
It had not been aimed at anyone in particular. Its purpose was to shift the blame.
Li Yun surmised that the Through-Ancient Dynasty had known about the Saint Emperor Ruins for a long time. It might even have visited them already.
That meant the Through-Ancient Dynasty knew who the fallen Saint Emperor was and how troublesome the entanglements behind him were.
If Saint Emperor Xuanyue's enemy learned what had happened, he would silence the Through-Ancient Dynasty without fail. With its resources and strength, the dynasty had no hope of resisting.
Judging by the information Wen Tiancheng had provided, Saint Emperor Xuanyue's enemy might recently have learned that Saint Emperor Xuanyue had fallen in the Strange Abyss Star Domain. That was why he had sent Wen Tiancheng to search for the Saint Emperor's remains.
The Through-Ancient Dynasty must have received word through some channel as well. To shift the blame, it had laid an elaborate trap before that enemy could arrive.
That way, when Saint Emperor Xuanyue's enemy came, he would learn only that someone else